HealthAlliance campaign tells patients it's getting it right

This is one of the new posters being displayed at HealthAlliance Hospital in Leominster in regards to its new campaign to ensure patients are operated on in the correct place. COURTESY PHOTOs

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LEOMINSTER -- No patient wants to wake up after surgery to find out the wrong shoulder was operated on, or that it was the other pinkie finger that ended up being amputated.

The staff at HealthAlliance Hospital doesn't want that either, which is why it started a campaign to crack down on any potential for wrong-sided procedures.

"Unfortunately, many health institutions react to things retroactively, and not proactively, which is what we're trying to do," said Dr. Dan O'Leary, HealthAlliance's chief medical officer. "We're reacting to the climate and awareness of wrong-sided procedures that has increased in the last year.

Part of the campaign plays off the Turkey Day rivalry between Leominster and Fitchburg high schools. Get it? Choosing a side?

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Much of that awareness started this spring when researchers from Johns Hopkins University published the results of a study that found that medical errors were the third-leading cause of death in the United States, behind heart disease and cancer, but ahead of respiratory disease, accidents and strokes.

That statistical data, coupled with news that the staff at Worcester's St. Vincent Hospital had not followed patient-identification procedures before a July 20 surgery that resulted in the removal of a healthy kidney from a patient, compelled HealthAlliance to establish protocols to minimize the possibility of that happening.

O'Leary explained that in his six years as the hospital's chief medical officer, there's never been an issue of a wrong-sided procedure.

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"You can design new protocols, but protocols are only as good as the culture of safety you have," he said.

In order to bolster that culture, the hospital has been displaying promotional imagery from its Correct Side campaign on TV screens throughout the hospital and posted imagery in patient interview areas.

"They'll say things like 'we're all on your side,' 'we're all on the same side,' 'tell us what side we're operating on today,'" O'Leary said, adding that constantly reminding patients and doctors is one way to ensure procedural mistakes aren't made.

The hospital's summer interns also created a new instructional video on preparing patients for surgery.

Marking patients for the site of a surgical procedure is a practice the hospital already employs. Prior to a surgery taking place, all medical staff and the patient are required to stop what they're doing, observe the mark on the patient, and make sure that it matches what the patient has told them and what appears in the patient's files, said O'Leary.

Operating-room windows have also been adjusted so that procedures can be more easily observed by hospital auditors, he said.

While much of the hospital's campaign is centered around awareness, just spreading word wasn't enough, he said.

"It's remarkable the amount of signs on hospital walls that people just don't notice," O'Leary said, referring to emergency patient assistance phone numbers that are clearly displayed -- yet rarely called. "We wanted to think of something eye-catching and we wanted to do something that involved choosing sides."

Which is why why the hospital decided to structure much of its campaign's promotional imagery around the Leominster and Fitchburg high school football rivalry.

Many of the images depict hospital staff, who are local alumni, dressed in their school's colors with the caption: "Sometimes you have to choose a side. On what side can we help you today?"

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